SUMMARY: Patches, should I or shouldn't I?

From: David T. Hightower (hightowr@cadre.af.mil)
Date: Fri Apr 16 1993 - 14:16:30 CDT


Well, the votes are in.

the general consensus is that the security, UFS and NFS jumbo patches should
probably be applied, since they tend to fix some rather nasty bugs. About the
others I received mixed responses, ranging from "if it ain't broke, doin't fix
it" to "if it ain't broke, you just don't know it's broke, so fix it".

One brave soul out there stated that they "had applied most of the patches to
their systems and lived to tell about it", and still another stated that he
would not apply a patch unless his system wouldn't boot without it. People
seemed to have pretty strong opinions about this.

I have decided that I will apply what I have to, and then hold off on the others
until a problem presents itself.

One caveat to OW3/Interleaf users out there: if you apply patch 100444-35
(which fixes about 50 OW3 bugs) it will create a bug with Interleaf; your
display will not refresh itself after opening a menu while in Interleaf. The
fix to this is to add the line

        Ileaf.popup.saveUnder: true

to your .Xdefaults file.

Thanks to:

fetrow@biostat.washington.edu
tom@yac.llnl.gov
jmcarli@srv.PacBell.COM
cdr@kpc.com
eeikhey@eeiua.ericsson.se

My original question:

> I've noticed that there appear to be quite a few patches available for
> 4.1.3/OW3/etc....is there any rationale behind applying/not applying them?
>
> I realize that a few patches are specific (i.e. C2 patches), yet for the most
> part they seem to be relevant to any 4.1.3 installation.
>
> Should I apply these patches? If so, which ones? why or why not? Or should I
> wait until a problem presents itself before trying to fix it?
>
> My hands are tied on a couple, since we receive CERT/AFASSIST which more or less
> direct us to apply security patches; yet what about the others?

______________________________________________________________________________
Dave Hightower | opinion? I'm allowed to have an opinion?
Systems Manager | well, if I DID have one, it'd be mine, all mine!
Air Force Wargaming Center | "sans peur et sans reproche"
hightowr@cadre.af.mil |
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